Crocodile Hunter’s Horrifying Death Relived

“I’m dying” Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin told his cameraman as he was fatally stung repeatedly by a sting’s ray’s jagged barb of death. Irwin's trusty cameraman Justin Lyons opens up in detail about the TV star’s death in Sept. 2006 after he was fatally stung by a stingray barb, including details about the beloved TV star’s final moments.

Lyons was filming with Irwin, 44, on the fateful day as they rode in a boat off the Australiancoast. As they wrapped up taping a documentary (about stingrays) and recalled how the stingray “started stabbing wildly with its tail, hundreds of strikes in a few seconds.”

It was only when “Steve was standing in a huge poolf bloodthat I realized something had gone wrong,” he told Australia’s Studio 10.

“He had a about a two-inch injury over his heart with blood-fluid coming out of it; he was in extraordinary pain. Even if we’d been able to get him into an emergency ward at that moment, we probably wouldn’t have been able to save him because the damage to his heart was massive.”